The Ministry of Health walked into a media engagement forum this week and dropped a bomb that left Russia-Ukraine war analysts popping their eyes in shock.
Afya House Principal Secretary Susan Mochache revealed that health records show that one in every three mothers visiting antenatal clinics across the country is an adolescent between 10 and 19 years.
She had to pause in between her address to check whether the message had sunk that Kenya has jumped into third place in teenage pregnancy numbers in the whole wide world.
It’s not the podium finish any nation would desire to have their name mentioned on the stadium loudspeaker about.
It certainly isn’t what Magical Kenya have in mind whenever they make those sleek videos serenading foreigners to visit Kenya and see our world-beating wonders with their own eyes.
10-to-19-year-old girls are still children. They might be good at dancing to Tiktok videos and driving their parents through the rails, but they’re still deficient of the mental steel necessary to quieten screaming newborns in between healing from premature membrane rapture.
I know we’re in a rat race to be the youngest grandparents ever to open Instagram accounts for our grandchildren, which they update with our own bundles.
We admit it; no one wants to give birth when their forearms can no longer support a glass of water without having the bone bandager on speed dial.
High cost of living
However, during these pinching economic times, when the high cost of living can’t stop baying for our blood, finding children who can chew gum and feed their own children at the same time is like expecting Oscar Sudi to finally clear his throat and speak in Parliament.
We have to raise our voices for disadvantaged young girls who neither have the freedom of reproductive choice nor the tranquility at home to support their toddling motherhood.
If we value human life, as we claim to do, we must free our minds from the focus on the numbers of new lives activated to the quality we invest into those newborns.
A child born by a teenage mother is nth times more likely to start coughing from acrid air at birth, cutting off the mother’s threadbare chances at a fair life, and dragging an entire family back to living off the trenches.
There is this phrase I come across a lot in my engagements with young people at their favourite chill spots across this city.
They’re unanimous that poverty is their number one enemy, and they’d kill it with their bare hands if it ever tried to drink their milkshake off those transparent plastic takeaway cups that I’m told is a mark of kuomoka.
It’s reassuring to watch young people voluntarily taking an oath to help the government fight poverty without their arms getting twisted, or asking for a follow back on Twitter.
The commitment reduces the government’s headache to only fighting ignorance and disease, freeing up their time to check on those knocking their heads on the Nairobi Expressway toll gates.
This anti-poverty vow isn’t restricted to young people alone. Everyone in this country is desirous of a better life of finer things enjoyed in the company of positive vibes, as we all wait for Jesus to come back and take us to the affordable housing project he promised to construct for us in heaven.
However, our young girls won’t be having the right farm tools to fight poverty if we keep sending them to the maternity wards at the tender age of 10, to check if they can successfully change diapers without calling their mothers while crying with their newborns.
Let’s help these young girls before they fall through the cracks. Your sons will thank you later. BY DAILY NATION